Vulgarity and Nullity

Robert A. Heinlein"The Number of the Beast"

To review "The Number of the Beast" after so long is to
creep belatedly on to a battlefield. Here the earth is churned up where Algis
Budrys diffidently charged Heinlein with writing for no-one but Heinlein. Here
are the marks where Alexei and Cory Panshin advanced in remorseless circles,
delicately testing the metastrength of Heinlein's metaphysics while shying off
from any blunt conclusion. Here and there a few fannish snipers have fired such
pointed enquiries as "it is well written?", "is it well plotted?",
"are its characters well drawn?" and "is it any
good?" (the answer in each case generally being "no", but
what are the opinions of mere fans? Their only effect has been to send Spider
Robinson flocking to Heinlein's cause, brandishing cruel weapons of unsupported
assertion and bad grammar). It's strange that the big critical guns have fired
so often into the air. Even Peter Pinto, whose much-reprinted review has left an
impressive crater, was sporting enough to aim well clear of the field hospital;
only a few of the vilest fans have gone so far as to suggest that, you know,
Heinlein's getting on a bit, and after having his brain reamed out with his
famous operation, well....

Bad taste notwithstanding, this is the kind of excuse to which many
long-term Heinlein fans would like to cling. To accept
"The Number of the Beast" as the logical endpoint of a
writer's evolution is simply nightmarish. The book is an embarrassment; it is
unremittingly awful; it is the first Heinlein novel I've found it a genuine
effort to finish, very nearly the first since Rocketship Galileo (1947)
that I've put down with a strong resolve not to read, the first I've wanted to
shut in a lead-lined cupboard and forget lest it contaminate my liking of (say)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. My (fairly) humble view is that the book
says nothing and says it very badly. "In literature," Auden observed, "vulgarity
is preferable to nullity, just as grocer's port is preferable to distilled
water." "The Number of the Beast" manages to combine
vulgarity with nullity, giving us a species of denatured grocer's port which
makes you thirst for some good honest gruel (E.C. Tubb) or even meths (Harlan
Ellison).

The book's vulgarity has many ramifications. An obvious starting point is
the treatment of sex, eg. in this subtle description of a kiss from the lady's
viewpoint: "Our teeth grated and my nipples went spung!" The
usual, and not indefensible, coyness below the waist is balanced by every
character's gross and grotesque obsession with breasts. Of the four lead
players, one woman has vast breasts to which constant allusions are made and
which she insists on calling teats (the
OED is invoked to support this archaism: Heinlein insists that "teat"
is pronounced "tit", possibly to avoid writing the latter word). The
other woman has small breasts to which constant allusions are made (she's the
one who goes spung). One man spends most of his waking hours watching or
thinking about the large breasts mentioned above, while the other consoles
himself with the reflection that even small-breasted women can be ever so good
in bed. Sometimes the men switch roles by way of variety, and the women meditate
on the same pervading subject too: "They do stick out, don't they?" "I'd
be an idiot to risk competing with Deety's teats," etc. Finally, every
character but our lady of the 95cm bust becomes accustomed to keep a weather eye
on the nipples associated with said bust, since these "pretty pink spigots"
go "up" and "down" with her emotions like -- this simile is
used -- a barometer. Gorblimey.

Another aspect of vulgarity is an overt contempt for the reader.
Interuniversal travel is achieved by nudging a gyroscope from three directions
at once, whereupon it vanishes: oh yeah? The number 6 to the power 6 to the
power 6 emerges from a hat as the number of possible universes, and at once
everyone is finding correspondences in the Book of Revelation like a gibbering
horde of von Dänikens. Blithely Heinlein shows future computer experts
being delighted by the wholly novel idea of putting smartarse comments in
programs; introduces Glinda the Good Witch of Oz (with that many universes, you
see, some of them just have to correspond to really famous fictional constructs
like Oz, Barsoom and Heinlein's own future history) and inserts into her mouth
such words as Lebensraum; mentions random numbers as something you slip
into a computer like God breathing life into Adam's nostrils (the memories of
Heinlein computers are apparently filled with long lists of random numbers) so
that a relatively stupid autopilot computer becomes a person indistinguishable
from the other characters.... In short, Heinlein doesn't give a damn about
plausibility any more. (A massive cop-out which may account for some
glitches is the buried revelation that the main characters' home universe is not
quite the same as ours.) If even for a moment you can force yourself to accept
the narrative, the author's voice soon snaps you out of it. This is just a
story, he says. I am Heinlein; I need cast no fictional spell; unaided I am
lovable; listen to me and enjoy!

Each major character, seemingly a projection of the author himself, is
near-as-dammit perfect with nothing to learn. Each shares the essential cultural
heritage which Heinlein has found within himself: all are fans of pulp SF, in
particular Edgar Rice Burroughs, Doc Smith and Weird Tales in toto; all
love the Oz books, The Mote in God's Eye and, above all, the complete
works of Robert A. Heinlein. All despise critics, incidentally, and some space is
devoted to the construction of a special hell for such loathsome creatures. What
is a critic but an articulate reader? What is negative criticism but the plaint
of a disappointed reader? Our author refuses to countenance such a wishy-washy
motto as "The customer is occasionally right": instead it's "America:
Love It Or Leave It!" with Robert A. Heinlein in the role of America, yay
yay.

By the end of Beast the uninitiated reader will be floundering in a
sea of in-jokes as the narrative devolves into walk-on appearances by characters
from just about every other book Heinlein has written. Again, the deeply
arrogant assumption is that the complete works of Heinlein are central to human
culture and myth: everyone goes ooh and aah as (e.g.)
whatsisname from Glory Road drops in like visiting royalty. The
characters are mightily impressed but the reader, alas, is not. This final
section of the book resembles nothing so much as the worst fan-fiction, the
variety whose daring use of characters from Dr Who or Star Trek
so overwhelms the writer that he or she finds plot and action superfluous.

The plot of The Number of the Beast merits the word "nullity".
A moderately implausible threat kicks our four breast fetishists into motion
right at the beginning, causing them to take dynamic action by getting the two
women pregnant (at the first try, as has become customary in Heinleinland).
Subsequently they flee Earth via their interuniversal gimmick, having utterly
failed to give warning to the world owing to difficulties in placing a phone
call. They visit more universes, lots of them, and very soon it's apparent that
their magic travel gadget (plus all the characters' supreme competence, plus the
fact that one of them can sense danger in advance, plus the fact that the author
clearly likes them all too much to let them in for anything worse than momentary
inconvenience) makes them immune to any peril. Possibly bored by this sheltered
existence, they spend their time arguing interchangeably and witlessly about
authority, responsibility, the chain of command and protocol hierarchies in
general... something not altogether unreasonable in the military context of Starship
Troopers, but pretty damned silly with just four civilians arguing about who
should be THE BOSS.

The travelogue aspect fails, I think, because (a) when you can go
anywhere, then nowhere in particular is compellingly interesting; (b)
apart from one rather dull Martian colony, none of the places visited is an
original creation: you get Lilliput and Oz on one hand (and with respect, I feel
these lands were adequately covered by Swift and Baum), or, on the other, worlds
unexcitingly like our own; (c) Heinlein finds his four cloned Heinleins
infinitely more interesting than mere places, and ignores the scenery to
concentrate on their bickering. Finally they team up with (gosh! wow!) Lazarus
Long and a lot more people and/or computers last seen in Time Enough For
Love, and decide to hold a convention. End of plot; in-jokes and narcissism
move to centre stage. Something which may or may not be the original implausible
threat puts in an appearance, but nothing is resolved or explained. The aimless
party is a microcosm of the aimless book; anyone unprepared to love the author
purely for his innate wonderfulness is very definitely persona non grata.

The style generally continues the hectoring, lecturing note first heard
from Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land. At best it's snappy
and studded with pseudo-epigrams, even if these sometimes have a second-hand
feel: "This Universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on
Government contract." The parts written from female viewpoints are the ones
which fail most embarrassingly (spung! -- like that), although the SF
jokes get pretty bad: "Tomorrow is soon enough. Or The Day After Tomorrow.
Better yet, Not This October. After The End of Eternity might be best."
(All capitals in original text.) The tone of voice remains distinctive; you can
tell it's Heinlein talking all right, no matter who's supposed to be speaking.
His personality is all; his insistence on taking criticism as ad hominem
attack has become prophecy, because to review the book is to review Heinlein;
and he has fewer and fewer interesting things to say. Inasmuch as Beast
is readable at all, it's thanks to traces of his old briskness and irreverence.
The erstwhile touches of mysticism have given way to great sickly wodges of the
solipsist/pantheist philosophy which Harshaw in Stranger correctly
identified as being about as sustaining and subtly flavoured as candyfloss. It
cloys, rapidly.

Why review "The Number of the Beast"? A critic should
aid the reader and also the writer. To the reader I can only say "Don't
bother," though the devil of it is that the poor bestseller-buyer in the
street, who will feel most ripped-off by this mishmash and (by extension) SF in
general, is not a fanzine reader -- nor, probably, a habitual reader of SF. My
own likely audience at least has the advantage of being able to follow most of
Heinlein's in-jokes. To the writer ... there's no point in addressing anything
to a writer who consigns all critics to an inescapable hell. Heinlein appears to
have severed his links with the world of reality, locking himself in a
mirror-maze where all his reflections understand and agree with him perfectly.
Our only way of registering protest is not to buy this terrible, terrible book.